Gadgetory

hey guys it's Branham in a minute from pocketnow.com and this is the hardware toward the HTC snap this is the unlocked European version which will work in the US but not with 3G data and Europe it'll work fine with 3G data and of course the snap will see a release on many global carriers in the US it will be on Sprint and t-mobile and Verizon and you'll see it in Europe on the major carriers there too coming out soon so let's take a tour of the device the device is characterized by this kind of circle theme this is because of the inner circle feature so these buttons here are circular you have a circular trackball here then we'll talk about later and the buttons are kind of rounded on the edges they're not exactly circular they kind of have a squarish rectangular shape to them and and of course we'll talk more about the keyboard in a minute but it's a nice looking device it's covered in a rubber coating just like the original t-mobile - so it feels very solid in hand it doesn't feel like you're gonna drop it it's not as Sheen as a an HTC Touch pro2 or a diamond - where there is just shiny materials galore but that's a good thing because you're not gonna get finger prints on the HTC snap this the screen is not touched so you're not touching the screen and you know you spend most of your time on the hardware buttons which is a matte finish and you're not gonna pick up fingerprints there so let's zoom in a little bit up here on the top we have the LED indicator light with a speaker and to the right of that is the light sensor and the light sensor oddly doesn't control screen brightness it only turns on and off the backlit key the screen is 2.4 inches diagonal which is admittedly kind of small but these non touchscreen devices have smaller screens and that's not that big of a deal compared to the rest of the device that takes up about half of the portion here so it's not too bad the resolution is 240 down and 320 across again resolutions kind of low but because the screen size is so small the text is still crisp and whatnot now let's go down to this area we have this nice brushed metal aluminum piece here that surrounds the hardware buttons here's call start soft key home and then the d-pad which is actually a trackball it's very interesting you can adjust the sensitivity it's a nice sensation because as with other Windows Mobile standard devices you have to move your thumb in this kind of fashion to move around on the screen but with the snap you have a smaller range of motion which is good and it lends to higher productivity I think here we have a backer ok button followed by another soft key button and the call and key now let's take a look at this keyboard this keyboard will definitely take a lot of getting used to and a quick glance you would think it's such a fantastic keyboard because the letters are big they're offset there is they're in a kind of smiley face like pattern so that it's more ergonomic but that's not the case I've only been using this for a few hours but so far I'm not too impressed by the keyboard and one of the biggest reasons is because this key here should actually be the a key if you look at any other QWERTY device like the q9 the a key goes all the way to the edge or you look at the blackjack to the a key goes all the way to the edge so I'm constantly hitting the tab button thinking that it's an a making me have to look at the keyboard when I type which really slows me down it's something to get used to but something you definitely want to know about now the numbers are embedded here in the letters so if you want to dial a number you just hold down the function key or if you're on the main screen the home screen and you want to dial somebody's number you can start dialing here or you can just type their name and in the software tour we're going to talk more about that now in terms of buttons we have the use we can get into the camera quickly we can get into the messenger quickly Windows Live Messenger email application in our circle which allows you to filter out email and just see the email from five or six or three people that you only want to correspond with so that you kind of cut out the junk and the clutter just respond to people that are emailing you that you think are important up here is the lock button so you tap and hold this to lock the device and the unlock sequence and we'll talk about this in the software tour is you press this button the soft key button and the Q again so that is the keyboard it's gonna take some getting used to but we'll talk about how the experience is after a few days in the full review coming up on pocket now calm here on the bottom we have the microphone let's go over to the side and while we're on the side let's talk a little bit about how thick this this is a very very thin device it's only 12 millimeters thick and as a comparison the q9 is about 0.2 millimeters thinner but you really can't tell it's it's much much thinner than the blackjack - it's thinner than the - actually the original t-mobile - the HDC xcalibur by a small amount but it feels very thin in hand it slides into the pocket very easily and that's a really great thing so let's continue on the outside here here we have a volume rocker then we have a lanyard hook there this helps you get the back battery cover off and we'll take that off in a second over on the other side we have nothing except there's a little bit of a there's a little cover here which will reveal the charging port which is used for syncing charging an audio of course this doesn't have a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack so you're gonna want to get a converter jack or you can use the headphones that come with the snap which includes that plug and let's look on the back on the back we have the the external speaker that's used for the speakerphone or if you're listening to music and then we have a nice brush metal piece actually the same sort of design as you'll find over here surrounding the 2 megapixel camera and there's no flash on the camera unfortunately and as I mentioned the entire back is that rubbery coating that was made famous by the xcalibur the t-mobile - really feels solid in him so to take off the battery cover you kind of got to stick your finger now in there and take take it off like this now down here you will find the microSD slot unfortunately it's under the battery cover this is a trend for all HTC devices they're doing under the battery cover for the micro sd card interestingly enough the battery on the snap is the same battery that comes on the HTC Touch pro2 so we're expecting really really fantastic battery life from the 1500 milliamp hour battery of course we're gonna talk all about battery life in the full review after we've used it for more than more than a few hours so first impressions of the device is that if you had a - before or the xcalibur this is going to be an awesome upgrade for you especially when it hits all the carriers at subsidized prices right now you can get this at clove code uk4 255 british pounds which comes out to about four hundred and fifteen dollars and considering this is a brand new phone that's a really good price for an unlocked device like this that just came out so coming up in the software tour we're going to go through all of the enhancements we're going to talk about the HTC inner circle feature and soon after that we will post the full review on pocketnow.com i'll put a link up on the video for the unboxing in case you missed that on the HTC snap that's it for now